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Death of a salesman willy's behavior
Death of a salesman willy's behavior
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Death of a salesman willy's behavior
Death of a salesman willy's behavior
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Linda is so wrapped up and making sure that he is happy that she thinks he can do no wrong. Willy’s affair is not seen as a wrongdoing, but it is seen as an get away for him. It is a portrayed as a dream or hallucination to the audience. In that way it gives off a feeling of sympathy for him, because of his illness.
Willy's logical inconsistencies brings confusion towards the audience itself toward the start of the play; in any case, they soon turn into a characteristic of himself. Willy's conflicting conduct is the after effect of his powerlessness to acknowledge reality and his propensity to control or re-make the past trying to get away from the present. For instance, Willy can't leave himself to the way that Biff never again regards him on account of Willy's affair with another woman. As opposed to concede that their relationship is irreparable, Willy retreats to a past time when Biff appreciated and regarded him. As the play goes on, Willy disassociates himself more from the present as his issues turn out to be excessively too much, making them impossible to manage.
As Willy develops his ideal view on the world, he begins to expect his sons to live up to his standards. He critiques his sons for not having jobs or a family or a house, but he is truly deflecting his emotions on them while continuing to live in his make believe world. Arthur Miller furthers his argument that ignorance is not bliss by showing how Willy’s ignorance doesn't make the other characters happy. Biff and Happy agree to follow their mother’s toleration towards Willy, but it comes with a cost. When Biff discovered that Willy cheated on Linda he desperately wanted to tell her, but this would uncover his father’s inner world.
Willy clearly had a very serious mental illness throughout this whole play, but never did anything about it. In Willy’s mind, the idea of having a mental illness took away from his masculinity, and he took out his mental illness on his wife as opposed to working on himself. This caused Linda to ultimately be mentally abused by him, and often having to compensate for his rude words and actions even though she never deserved any of it. All she did was care for Willy, so the treatment she received throughout this play was unfair and she was often left taken advantage of. In conclusion, The idea of masculinity strains the relationship between Linda and Willy throughout this depressing
Willy repeatedly experiences delusions of talking to his late rich brother, Ben, often talking to him as if he were alive. His father abandoned him early on, then Ben, his great brother who truly found the American Dream in Willy’s eyes. Later on in his life, Willy’s own son’s abandoned him. In a study posted by Alzheimer’s Research UK, depression has recently been linked to a higher dementia risk in those over 55. Willy being 63 at the time of the play, along with having heavy implications, almost outright said multiple times in the play, having depression, it is not a surprise he likely has a form of dementia as severe as it
Willy always found his dreams in someone else which is why his happiness never came. At first it was his father then it was his brother Ben, and then it was famous sales man Dave Singleman. He looked for others inside of himself which led to him not being satisfied. Dreams can not be rented or borrowed. Willy never realized this and in turn it caused his mental health to deteriorate even more than it already had.
Though at first Linda appears to be a submissive housewife, by the end of the play her true purpose as a protector for Willy both against himself as well as the judgement from their sons Biff and Hap is prominent. As stated by Willy directly, Linda is his foundation. She is the glue that holds their family together, she stands by Willy and is always optimistic despite his struggles with working as a salesman in the remnants of The Great Depression. Linda always does her best to both motivate Willy, as well as push him to maintain his relationship with Biff and Hap.
Throughout the duration of the play, Willy has flashbacks of his life often concerning his own problems and have little or nothing to do with his sons' lives. He fails to show emotional vulnerability or give guidance to his sons when they need it most. When compared to the guidance his neighbor Charley gives to his son Bernard, Willy’s advice is unremarkable and does not translate to success like he thinks it does. “While Willy teaches Biff and Happy that all they need to be successful is to be well liked, Charley makes sure that Bernard understands that he has a better chance to get ahead through thoughtfulness for others and hard work” (Abbotson).
Because Willy no longer has a job, he is unable to support his family the way that he is supposed to, which negatively affects his relationship with his wife Linda, and their two
In Death of a Salesman, Linda is Willy’s loyal and loving wife, who always unconditionally supports Willy’s unrealistic American Dream and defends Willy against the criticisms of their sons. She criticizes that Biff should not wander from place to place any more because she and Willy are getting older and will leave this world one day. Biff replies to Linda’s statements, but he doesn’t mention Willy at all. Biff’s behavior makes Linda upset and angry; Linda tells Biff that he either respects his father or leaves home. When Linda tells Biff that Willy often mumbles to himself, Biff is ashamed of Willy’s irrational behavior.
On top of his failures in the workplace, his own family adds to this stress. Linda exists as an extremely passive wife. Even though she discovers that Willy is planning his own suicide, she does nothing to stop it. Not only that, but she does not even talk to him about the serious issue for fear of hurting his pride. One must wonder if she had shown support and care for him, would he still have felt so alone and taken his own life?
This helped lead Willy to his own downfall because he was always lacking and felt unwanted and
Willy reveres his brother Ben and learns an unscrupulous version of success. Willy believes obtaining results, no matter the method, defines success which provides Biff with a faulty sense of reality. Willy lacks the
It is Willy’s blind faith in his ill-advised version of the American Dream that leads to his rapid decline, as he becomes unable to accept the disparity between his dreams and his own
In his seminal work, Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller portrays wretched conditions inflicting the lives of lower class people amid class-struggle in 1940s America. Miller sets the story during the great financial depression in the US , in between times after World War I and around World War II, though his characters hardly speak about the trauma of two World Wars. Miller earns an enormous success by putting an ordinary salesman as the protagonist in his play instead of putting a man of social nobility. In the play, Miller depicts his central character, Willy Loman as a destitute salesman struggling to rise up the social ladder in a capitalist society, who remains deluded by a 'dream of success ' and takes on a relentless pursuit of happiness that eventually brings his tragic demise. Though some critics speak in favor of the popular account of the cause of his death being his excessive obsession with so called the American dream and the 'capitalist oppression ' ; however, many still refuse to ascribe the cause of his death to capitalist oppression, which I will use synonymously with American dream here.